Friends Write 04.11

Friends of b>side offer their reviews, recipes and raves on all things creative…
Not wishing to get caught up in the latest must-haves, we want to share a diverse range of endeavours that has stopped us in our tracks.

The Who: Live At Leeds When you listen to this album, make sure the wife/girlfriend/kids and even the neighbours are out of town. Crank the speakers to whatever punishment they can handle and prepare yourself as The Who pummel your aural senses to smithereens with their menacing full-on battle cry. To some perhaps the best live album ever, but certainly standing the test of time some forty years later. (Clyde)

A snapshot of old New Zealand taken recently in Parnell. Nice. (Fiona)

Favourite Song for a Funeral (No.2) Naked As We Came, a brutally sweet love song from Indie folkies Iron and Wine. (Kate)
http://www.ironandwine.com/music/naked-as-we-came/

PJ Harvey: Let England Shake With her latest release Polly has delivered the almost perfect English album. While the lyrics discuss war and history, her music manages to celebrate that peculiar brand of English eccentricity. A record full of ghosts, it manages to sound both familiar and fresh at same time.

NPR have a recent recording of  a live show she gave at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater. Her accompaniment included her regular collaborators Mick Harvey and John Parish. You can listen to it here http://www.npr.org/2011/04/21/135519051/let-san-francisco-shake-pj-harvey-in-concert (Tony)

White Lies: Ritual The sophomore effort from these London lads follows the exact same pattern as their debut – three great songs to get the house rocking followed by some average numbers to give you a chance to make the tea, and then another strong track near the end to wake you up. It’s arguable that the weaker efforts give more strength to the big anthems but you may find yourself skipping some of them. The good thing is that they now have sufficient tunes to make a kick-ass live set. You shouldn’t compare this band to Joy Division or Depeche Mode as they were pioneers and the music scene was very different in the early eighties, however there is enough of the power of those outfits present here to make ‘Ritual’ a pleasure too special to remain unknown… (Nigel)

The Great Outsider OK we were listening to music outsider Gary Wilson’s album, You Think You Really Know Me on the way home from the supermarket, like people do. Neither of us really knew anything about him, I had bought the CD on the strength of a review and sample track on Beck’s website. So the conversation went something like, “He sounds like some dude who’s just got out of a really long bath with a glass of red and a doobie, sloped off to his home recording studio in his gruds and recorded himself sing… “She’s so real, (punctuated by a Tourettes-style yelp) She’s got red lips, She’s out of reach (another yelp)…” This vision grew large in our minds, and with it a smirk and a haw haw that became audible in the car over Wilson’s synthesised pre-Prince electro-funk. Of course this lead to a YouTube search. Wilson was a recent performer at the SXSW 2011, and this? Better than Easter Bunny!

Be sure to watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acdvn1P_7BA

If Robert Smith had lost his way… (Fiona)

The Funhouse: The Future of the Pleasure State, Benjamin Appel. A science fiction satire of the pleasure state, set in America in the year 2039, written in 1959. The 2-hour working-day is optional and life exists in a perpetual state of adolescence thanks to the efforts of technology. This existence is further protected by an amendment to The Constitution guaranteeing an individual the right to happiness, and also by the vast consumption of little helpers (eg. U-Lato, You Laugh at the Universe, a little pill that first came into use after its initial pilot distribution to mourners at funerals). The ruling government of the day consists of a battery of thinking machines living on a different planet (hmmmm…). A predictable premise with obvious consequences, but an engaging and all too familiar reminder of how little we have learned as a race. Still! (Fiona)